The radical notion that women are adults

Wake up, black women. You are all still slaves and white women are your masters

This article, questioning whether paying attention to black men and boys harms black women and girls, really made me angry. While I believe Brittney Cooper, the author, has the best of intentions, the whole piece is infected with feminist ideologies and Brittney seems genuinely clueless as to the real state of affairs when it comes to black women: they are little more than slaves.

I’m not going to pretend I know what it’s like to be a black woman, because obviously, I don’t.

But I do know what it’s like to be a white woman, and choosing not to exploit my right to abuse black women doesn’t mean I’m blind to the fact the choice exists.

Here is Brittney’s article with my responses:

Two African-American girls live in the White House. But Malia and Sasha Obama’s presence there, in a traditional two-parent home, alongside their highly accomplished mother and their devoted grandmother, feeds a dangerous and false narrative about the progress of African-American girls and women. Though President Obama has been able to provide this kind of life for his daughters, he seems oblivious to all the ways in which Malia and Sasha’s educational and economic trajectory, even prior to coming to the White House, looks in no way similar to that of the masses of African-American girls.

That’s right, Brittney. Sasha and Malia Obama are rich and you are not. Very few black children of either gender are rich. Don’t forget though that those girls will always be black first and rich second.

That’s racism, and there’s a reason for it.

Like many African-American men, the president has bought into the narrative about the problems of absentee black fathers and about the potential danger and destructiveness of fatherless black sons. Donning the role of father-in-chief for back people last week, the president announced his new My Brother’s Keeper initiative, designed to address and ameliorate issues of low achievement and lack of mentoring for young black and brown men.

You thinks that’s a narrative that needs to be bought into? Are you crazy? It’s not a narrative, sweetheart. It’s reality. I can understand your dislike of the idea that young black men are innately dangerous and destructive but you need to separate a racist cultural trope from the stark truth that all children, no matter what their skin color, need their fathers and suffer deeply from their absence.

Those are two different things.

I am ambivalent about My Brother’s Keeper. Yes, by almost every social measure, African-American men, and boys in particular, fall behind at alarming rates. They are suspended from school the most, incarcerated the most, have the highest rates of unemployment, commit disproportionate amounts of violent crime, and have some of the lowest high school and college graduation rates. Frequently their encounters with law enforcement and white male authority figures end with black men dead.

You can be ambivalent about that one particular initiative. Fair enough. But read the rest of your paragraph again. All those problems are linked to the absence of a father. The children of single mothers everywhere are more prone to social problems. A lot of that grows out of grinding poverty, which is far more likely when children do not have two committed parents raising them.

Even living near single mothers causes problems for otherwise stable communities.

Of all the factors most predictive of economic mobility in America, one factor clearly stands out in their study: family structure. By their reckoning, when it comes to mobility, “the strongest and most robust predictor is the fraction of children with single parents.” They find that children raised in communities with high percentages of single mothers are significantly less likely to experience absolute and relative mobility. Moreover, “[c]hildren of married parents also have higher rates of upward mobility if they live in communities with fewer single parents.” In other words, as the figure below indicates, it looks like a married village is more likely to raise the economic prospects of a poor child.

These are alarming times. Times that would make Ida B. Wells weep. Over these many months, as I have watched the failure to convict both Trayvon Martin’s and Jordan Davis’ killers, I have worried. Worried because I know that when African-American boys are being killed with impunity by white people this triggers every kind of deeply held race trauma that African-Americans have. We circle the wagons. We fight fiercely to protect our beloved boys. We demand their right to grow into men. And we should.

I agree. You should fight to protect your men and boys. Your interests as women are deeply, irrevocably tied to the interests of the men in your community.

The thing is: This “we” is mostly African-American women – doing the fighting, the organizing, the praying, the rearing, the fussing, the protecting, the loving. And the losing. Black women have been their brothers’ biggest and best keepers.

You may fight for your sons but how many of you fight for your husbands? It’s not a trite question. The lack of marriage in the black community is a direct contributing factor to entrenched, almost unbreakable poverty. It’s hardly the only factor, but it is the one you can most easily control.

There are powerful economic and cultural factors working to make sure the black community stays fractured and easily exploitable.

Stick with me here and I’ll explain what I mean.

But when black men occupy space at the center of the discourse, black women lose critical ground. I wish these struggles did not feel like zero sum struggles. I wish that black men — Barack Obama included — had the kind of social analysis that saw our struggles as deeply intertwined.

Aside from Barack Obama, which black men are at the center of the discourse? All the ones suspended from school? The ones with no marketable education or skills? The ones in jail? The ones with felony convictions who are disenfranchised? The ones struggling to pay child support working shitty jobs for little money and no benefits? The homeless ones? The returned veterans suffering from PTSD and committing suicide at alarming rates?

Look around you. There are very few black men who wield real power. They are barely on the margins of discourse, never mind occupying the center. Where do you get this idea that black men occupy space at the center of the discourse? It certainly isn’t from your lived reality. Unless you last name is Obama, of course.

According to the African American Policy Forum, black girls are suspended at a higher rate than all other girls and white and Latino boys. Sixty-seven percent of black girls reported feelings of sadness or hopelessness for more than two weeks straight compared to 31 percent of white girls and 40 percent of Latinas. Single black women have the lowest net wealth of any group, with research showing a median wealth of $100. Single black men by contrast have an average net wealth of $7,900 and single white women have an average net wealth of $41,500. Fifty-five percent of black women (and black men) have never been married, compared to 34 percent for white women.

Here is the ugly harsh truth, Brittney: black women are little more than slaves.

Your role in contemporary, liberal, feminist society is to do all the shit work rich white women think beneath them. Someone still has to raise the children, change dirty diapers, wipe snotty noses, cut up apples so no one chokes. Someone has to clean house and fetch dry-cleaning and pick the kids up from school. Someone has to wash dishes and do laundry and scrub the toilet.

Guess who that someone is?

It’s you.

Those well to do white ladies with $40 000? That money has been stolen from black women in the form of third world wages paid for domestic labor. White women have no interest in paying fair wages or offering benefits to the mostly black and Hispanic women they hire to raise their children and clean their houses and provide their husbands with sexual services. What would the net worth of those groups look like if white women had to pay a living wage to their nanny or housekeeper?

Rich white women have a deeply vested interest in making certain that the black community remains fractured. Why do you think they gerrymander their school districts to keep black children in inferior, underfunded schools while their own children go to state of the art institutions built with the money they have stolen from black women?

This situation is dire at every level. But perhaps the most troubling thing of all: The report indicates that while over 100 million philanthropic dollars have been spent in the last decade creating mentoring and educational initiatives for black and brown boys, less than a million dollars has been given to the study of black and brown girls!

And you think that’s just an oversight? Oh, oopsy, we forgot to study the girls?

Wake up, lady. You are slaves. One does not raise the consciousness of slaves.

Several years ago, in line with the rise of the field of Girls Studies in academe, a group of students asked me to teach a course on Black Girls Studies. The number of books and scholarly articles barely added up to enough for a full course syllabus.

I’m surprised there was even that much material. Who in the academy is producing the research? Are your white colleagues even a tiny bit interested in black girls? And how many of them are paying slave wages to black girls to raise their white children and clean their sparkling white toilets?

No mass movements to address the social plight of African-American women will ever happen because there is not enough collective knowledge about us to be alarmed. And in fact, this failure to study and ascertain the actual social condition of black women is a centuries-old problem.

No mass movement will ever happen because you are relying on your masters to kickstart it. White women will never, ever give up their slaves willingly. Not a chance. Their ability to build their own wealth through labor force participation requires a constant source of disorganized, easily exploited human capital to perform domestic labor and all the other really shitty jobs white women are far too precious to consider doing themselves.

In 1893, Fannie Barrier Williams lamented before the Chicago World’s Fair: “Less is known of our women than of any other class of Americans.” There were “no organizations of far-reaching influence for their special advancement, no conventions of women to take note of their progress, and no special literature reciting the incidents, the events, and all things interesting and instructive concerning them.” Moreover, “separate facts and figures relative to colored women are not easily obtainable,” she told the crowd.

That’s not an accident, honey. It’s a requirement. In order for white women to continue to surreptitiously enslave black women, black women must be kept totally ignorant of their own situations.

It’s the Matrix, and you are the batteries.

Black women remain caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of hyperinvisibility and invisibility. Everyone thinks that they know everything there is to know about us, but based on facts alone, very little is actually known. And what we don’t know can hurt us – is hurting us. What we fail to acknowledge is that images of black and brown women drive a startlingly large amount of social policy. Disdain toward supposedly irresponsible black and brown women – welfare queens as those on the right derisively call them – is at the heart of the right’s continued unfeeling push toward austerity. This same disdain toward disproportionately black and brown female wage laborers undoubtedly informs the national resistance to raising the minimum wage. Images of “dastardly” brown women crossing our borders illegally in order to drop anchor babies drives immigration policy.

It’s not disdain. It’s brutal economic reality. Our labor force cannot function without a class of slaves. Someone needs to do the shit work, for as little money as possible. Single black mothers face starvation level “benefits” or starvation level wages to do that shit work.

And the exceptionalism of Michelle Obama and her daughters frankly doesn’t help matters. Black women themselves become complicit in this pushing of ourselves to the background, marshaled there by our mythic belief in our own strength, our unresolved traumas over fathers who failed to meet expectations, our self-sacrificial love for black men, and our deep desires to respectably conform to the American nuclear ideal. Michelle Obama makes many black women long for this return to tradition.

And so you should. Guess who is the most likely to get married and stay married? College educated, rich white women. Guess who is most likely to enjoy the health and happiness and benefits of marriage? Rich white women. The more educated and affluent the woman, the more easily she can see that a stable, long-term relationship with a man is in her best interest overall. She raises her sons and daughters to realize the same truth.

There are no easy answers here. Black and brown men’s needs and lives matter. And I’m glad we have a president sensitive to those needs. But as Mychal Denzel Smith argued, “The path to equality for Black and Brown people [cannot be] to uphold patriarchy.” And as Dani McClain argues, it seems that women and girls simply have no place in this new set of initiatives. Beyond the problems of using personal responsibility and philanthropy as models to solve a deeply systemic set of social problems, the failure to imagine the struggles of men and women of color as linked together is perhaps the most short-sighted aspect of the My Brother’s Keeper initiative.

There is no failure to imagine the struggles of black men and women are linked. You are just profoundly misunderstanding the linkages. Black men are hounded from schools that do not capture their talents, interests or abilities. They are thrown into a labor market that offers few opportunities and incarcerated at phenomenal rates to make labor force participation even more difficult. The broader culture both vilifies and exploits them, encouraging fractured families and single parenthood. That leaves black women holding the bag, raising children alone with few choices but to perform the labor white women need.

For there is no saving black and brown men without the labor and love of black and brown women. Yet surely, we have come far enough to imagine liberation strategies that don’t require men of color to tread over “this bridge call our backs.” While we, women of color, are doing the heavy lifting to keep our communities functional and intact, the question remains, “Who will lift us?” Who will fight for us?

Now there is the right question. Who will fight for you? It’s not white folks. Certainly not white women: they need you.

You know who will fight for you?

It’s the same group of people who always do the fighting. Who always put their lives on the line to protect their communities. Who risk everything to protect those they love.

Men.

The black community is no different than any other community. If you put the needs of men and boys at the very forefront of every social justice project you undertake, at the center of all your discourse, at the very heart of your community, you stand a chance. You will face dire opposition from a larger culture that can’t function without the slave labor of black women. The pressures on black men to abandon their children will intensify, up to and including even greater rates of incarceration and disenfranchisement. The glorification of violence and criminality will intensify. The gentrification of neighborhoods and segregation of school districts will intensify. The more the black community works to elevate men specifically, the more strenuously white culture will intervene to prevent that from happening.

It’s not black men walking across “this bridge called your backs”. It’s white women. When you embrace feminist ideas like “the patriarchy” and “equality”, you play right into their hands. Black men are not your enemy.

you may need to put this on youtube or something for it to generate enough backlash to work. i never really have gotten the “strong, independent woman who don’t need no man” trope, just seemed like an excuse for them to be extremely bitchy and selfish.

Let me tell you the unpleasant truth. Blacks have a lower IQ, higher impulsiveness, higher criminality. Unfortunately, genetically, inborn. All research points to this. All attempts to fix this, with head start, with countries like Liberia, with 50 years of inverse discrimination, called affirmative action, all failed, because the main issue is inborn.

Whites with the same behavior, with the same IQ, are treated worse, but they are rare. Low IQ whites work in menial, slave like jobs. Especially if they have no strong work ethics. It just so happens there are, percent wise, more low IQ blacks with low work ethics.

Black schools are bad why? Because the students are criminal gang bangers, with little interest in academics, who break the schools. And yes, they exert bad influence on the exceptional good student, blaming him of acting “white”.

Proof: read the Bell curve. Or all 70 posts on Human-Stupidity about race and iq.

I am sorry, it is not my fault. I wish Blacks could make a Korea, a Taiwan, a China in Africa. But it has not happened, and is unlikely to happen.

Japan is a much more hostile place and most of Africa, but the Japanese made a rich country out of it. Israel is a desert, the survivors of concentration camps made it bloom. Africa, unfortunately is not so lucky. Why do you think? One must not say, I know.

Check out Detroit, where almost no white man is left to discriminate and mistreat Blacks. Blacks are the police, the chief, the major, …….

Zav

You ever heard of that shithole right under us called Haiti? It was on it’s way to stability after Napoleon left but since the United States feared the worst (what would OUR slaves do if they saw a functioning country of blacks less than a hundred miles away?) and began invading at every opportunity, emptying their gold reserves in 1915.

During the black power movement (another time where Haiti’s stability posed a threat to black compliance) we also helped put the Duvaliers in power to make sure that Haiti went so far into debt that it would never break even.

This isn’t just some anti-American rant here, plenty of European countries also tried to loot the country for every dollar.

As bullshit as it is to test starving people who have been skullfucked by half the developed world, do you really think a lower IQ is going to prevent a country having a steady supply of food, just by itself?

Of course this is all my humble opinion, but could some (keyword here: some. Most are totally fine) MRA’s consider dropping this “racial realist” –i.e. racist; gotta love euphemisms– bullshit? I know the MRM comes from the subsoil of the internet but that’s no excuse to act like it’s Stormfront. The only reason I get so upset is because MRA’s have an advantage because racism is ENDEMIC to feminism. But you guys throw it all away with this shit.

I’m not telling you that all races are essentially the same because you’d never believe me anyway, I’m telling you that any grown up movement expecting to be taken seriously should move beyond referring to a god damn IQ test to implicitly justify hundreds of years of oppression and a continued apathy. Be the better man, please.

But JB’s comment section is a place of free speech, and while I consider your opinion retarded and posionous to the hard work people like JB and the fellas at AVfM are doing, it’s yours to have.

soaren

Oh you mean the country that killed all the white french and then Raped the leftover women?

Yeah. Great point your making there.

Not.

Your racist trash.

Zav

LOL.
Because the white French were just there chilling out and having beers with them, right?

Oh, yeah, they enslaved them.

“Women got raped!”

Ah, the ol’ appeal to rape…and you probably consider yourself not to be a feminist lapdog, too. Are you implying that slaves weren’t raped? Those French women didn’t deserve what happened to them but rebellion is violent and no one forced them to be there. And yet they were, sharing the spoils of an atrocity until shit went south.

I shared your excellent article on Facebook at got an ‘interesting’ response from a ‘white’ woman in australia …. maybe Feminazi …………..

” Ishrana Anna
oh that’s a bit rich, when I sat for weeks at a time trying to help one of the custodians of the bunjalumn country with her life, her children, her community, which I lived in and did more for an aboriginal and the community at large more than anyone else was wiiling to do. I was approached by an elder days before I gave notice to establish something for the children in the community. Over the top mate. There’s some very active white women who see woman as woman. Not color. Many of us are black women in white women’s bodies and it is this indoctrination of black woman that white woman is against them that keeps black woman down to the point where they wont charge someone who defiles their child because of this sort of shit. Indoctrination by land council etc,. Many white woman have worked very hard for woman, community, and everything just because they love, blood has been spilt, lives have been lost , destruction of families, incarseration. Not on. Absolute bullshit. Come again. I am not alone in what I do for women. It is prolific. Forgive me I do the work, can’t spell the country, tried to look it up. Sorry dyslexic. Oh that must because I’m a white woman.
6 hours ago · Like · 1

ME I’m just the ‘messenger’ sharing an article by a very intelligent empowered ‘black’ woman in the US …… and if your own experience Ishrana Anna is the collective truth in Australia after 236 years of systematic genocide + ‘stolen generations’ , why is it today that there is still a 21 year difference in life expectancy between an aboriginal boy and a white/non aboriginal girl born TODAY …. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaZtOIsgBqQ

2 hours ago · Like · Remove Preview

Ishrana Anna
You are taking things and using them to your advantage for your point please be aware that there are many parts to woman. There is a lot that you don’t know about what still goes on in stolen generation to be frank ther is no stolen generation it never stopped. You can make points as much as you like, you need to understand one thing man work with masculine woman works with femnine. Be aware of this and weill take you a long way. You did not read every word in my post woman is woman. The vibration you are generating at the moment has nothing to dop with twinflame templates Check yourself. Do you have a problem with women?
2 hours ago · Like · 1

Ishrana Anna
I’m going to give you a bit of unsoilicited advice you are supposed to focused on one thing at the moment, ask yourself why are you scattering your energy?

This is pure Castlian Spanish. From the moorlands of the Iberian Peninsula.

Fred Flinststein

Excellent!
I learned a version local to that area I was in , most likely!

didact

Zav, your version of Haitian history is flawed to the degree of fiction. I suggest you try again.

Mel

LOL …. JudgeBitchy …. your article has hit a ‘nerve’ with what appears a ‘white Feminazi’ woman in australia ……. I intend to forward your excellent article to minority aboriginal ‘coloured’ women in australia ……. here’s the latest ‘attack’ and appears intent on silencing a man, and Ishrana Anna is unaware I have aboriginal australian ‘black’ man ancestory …

ME … ” your comments are interesting, disappoiting and unfortunate …….. the article is by a ‘black’ woman in the US and Ishrana Anna you make unsubstantiated claims and criticise me, which in truth is a projection, and give unsolicited advice ….. I invite you to ‘play the ball, not the ‘man” and respond to the author of the article, a ‘black’ woman, at judgybitch.com …… as I will forward your comments, especially your claim ‘ … is no stolen generation it never stopped …’ ……………
about an hour ago · Like

Ishrana Anna
Do what you want I may things that you do not. You don’t have fact you can call on anything you want. There a lot things you state and you do no understand. Only disappointing because you are not self focused when it is critical that you are interesting that you can comment on the feminine you can’t take guidance. Look at what I am now doing and you would like me to action on a poster I will not agree with because I know how hard woman has fought in my backyard for woman internationionaly of all creeds all education levels all backgrounds. You are so foolish you do not know what you are doing at this point. I would go as far as to say a wilh a little bit if vindication in your tone and threats. You do not realise how much I don’t care about what you may think what action yo will take. I know who I am, what I am here for and I represent woman. When are you going to represent man. “

Spaniard

The Spanish colony of Guinea Ecuatorial (not the Dutch Guinea Bissau or the French Guinea Conakry) was an Arcadia since XVIIII Century to 1960s. Ivony and ebony living together in perfect harmony.
It was called the “Switzerland of Africa”.
You can tell Ecuatorial Guineans ftom the rest of Sub Saharian Africans because they are happy smily people always making jokes, with good temper and they have no ethnics struggle in their country. Because we, Spaniards, left them our way of life: party, tapas and vinos, siesta, taking things lightly, jokes and mass every Sunday. Thousends of them studied college in Spain.
We cared about their evangelization and we give them Spanish passport to all of them. We treated Guinea like any other territory in the Península and we still considering them our brothers and sisters.
People from the former Dutch, French, British and Belgian African colonies seem to be brutalized and exploited.

Reblogged this on The Vivifier and commented:
Read to the end, you’ll get it. Fucking really well done.

FuzzieWuzzie

JB, while I am in full agreement that feminism has been a disaster for black people, I think you have missed the mark characterizing black women as domestic servants. While I may be biased having lived most of my life in California, I think practically all of them would be first generation immigrant. Anyway, there can’t be that many as it would take a stratoshpheric income to afford them.
I want to submit that you may be biased on two counts. First, you’re white. Second and more subtle, you’re Canadian. From long discussions with an Albertan, She let me know that black people in Canada are different. For some reason, they are more assimilated. Could it be that it may be because there are proportionally fewer and not likely to form seperate communities? That was pure speculation on my part.
The photo you used at the top of your post, I would guess, came from a high end hotel. Am I wrong?

This is her baseline, unquestionable: ““The path to equality for Black and Brown people [cannot be] to uphold patriarchy.””

She wants what white feminists want. As an advocate for the American black community, she is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. She and you are opposites in valuing the nuclear family. Her priority is normalizing her feminist priorities and values, (black) women like she is, and making her self the prototype. Correcting the pathologies of the black community is *not* a priority for Prof Cooper, insofar the black community deviates from her feminist priorities and values.

Contra you and Michelle Obama, Prof Cooper justifies her normative feminism by asserting the nuclear family model doesn’t work for the American black community, eg, “we need to rethink our investments in the traditional nuclear family, since we have historically never really had the mom, dad, 2.5 kids and a dog model in African American communities anyway.”

While I didn’t major in African American studies, I did take a history class that referred to the American black community as a touchstone. Her assertion strikes me as false. From what I recall, nuclear family was in fact the functioning heart of the American black community both for slaves and free blacks (free black slave owners in the antebellum South are a particularly fascinating area of history) during the slavery era and after slavery. Functioning black communities, with nuclear families as their basic unit, existed and prospered in the Jim Crow South, despite the social structural limits.

What were the features of the American black community that produced Martin Luther King and his capable black peers *within* the Jim Crow South? Shouldn’t that be the model? When Malcolm X turned his life around, what model of family did he employ?

The nuclear family should have been their engine for stabilization. Instead, as social barriers have been removed since the mid-20th century, the nuclear family that cohered the American black community while under seemingly greater-adverse conditions seems to have concurrently disintegrated.

What social trends and practices have arisen since the mid-20th century that might have caused the breakdown of the nuclear family in the American black community?

The nuclear family is the historical solution for the American black community. Yet Prof Cooper’s feminism is explicitly antithetical to the primacy of the nuclear family, specifically in the American black community. She is the social pathology afflicting black Americans.

Mel

Powerful article integrating gender, race and at last, the often avoided, class ………………..

My one conspiracy theory I hold to is that the liberal community is using the black community as a sort of test bed for their social ideas. They want to do experiments to figure out how to have an entire community of single (fatherless) parent families that is sustainable and succeeds. Their tool is the government, and they will absolutely try everything.

Except fathers.

Why? They need to teach the threat narrative, that all men are predators. Any attachment to an adult male represents a possible chink in that threat narrative. It must be squashed and abolished. The reason is that by being threatened by men, they receive power as a threatened class. Or that is at least how the theory is supposed to work. Government becomes the source of all.

And you know what? I’ve been called misogynist, sexist, rape apologist enough fucking times that I’m going to let them have their fatherless society. I’m out. There’s nothing here left worth fighting for. It’s not that I hate women, but rather I am acknowledging that after decades of feminist teaching in university, they hate me. I wish them all the happiness their hate can provide.

As Hawkeye once said: “Have a long and happy hate.”

Zav

Honestly, this is barely even a conspiracy theory. The “men bad, women good” is a concept that feminists have tried to shove down everyone’s throat, but the black community has found themselves to be an easy target. So far I’d say they’re suceeding. The article JB responded to is not a rare anomaly, there are plenty (although I wouldn’t say most) of black women who despise men so much that they don’t want to believe they’re part of the solution to many of their own problems.

Well to quote the dark lord of the sith of feminism herself Gloria “baby butcher” Steinem, the truth will set you free but first it will piss you off. The core of the problem goes much deeper than feminism itself but rather who propagated second wave feminism and beyond, the descendants of the same banksters that pay rolled and profited from the slave trade in the United States until 1865. Break down and divide the genders, the races, and keep poverty thriving and the populace is much easier to control. These banksters are counting on racism and feminism to help keep this divide. Since these folks also own 90% of the MSM it is not an issue to feed the public a steady diet of race baiting and feminist propaganda. Anyone who disagrees is bombarded with shaming and silencing tactics of course. Another thing that is disturbing is Sheryl Sandberg and her banning words agenda, really filthy rich lady? How many women is she and has she exploited to add to her wealth. Rich Jewish woman publishes “girl power” lean in bullshit book and idiotic feminist flock to buy the thing.

Worried because I know that when African-American boys are being killed with impunity by white people this triggers every kind of deeply held race trauma that African-Americans have.

African Americans are being killed with impunity by white people? Really? State your source, please.

I wish these struggles did not feel like zero sum struggles.

But, like so many of these discussion, it is being made into one for the convenience of the author. It’s kind of like “that guys rich, which isn’t fair, because he has money that I could have otherwise, if he didn’t have it.” But that’s not how money works. Money is tied to wealth, and at least for now, there is a theoretically endless supply of wealth waiting to be made – create wealth, and you’ll have money. But therein lies the rub – you have to create. The rich guy didn’t get his money by taking it from you, he got it by creating something that people wanted to buy from him – he created wealth. Fact is, statistically speaking, that poor guy probably bought whatever the rich guy was selling. All the poor guy needs to do is figure out how to create his own wealth – the rich guy isn’t holding him back. HE is holding himself back.

Making these things into zero sum discussions makes them more interesting, and makes it easier for people, like this author, to dismiss uncomfortable facts. The poor man gets to dismiss his poverty as being due to the fact that some rich, greedy guy took the money that he should have been able to make, but that’s not how money works. And this, dear author, is not how social concern and advocacy works. You don’t need to diminish interest and care for one subject before you can gin up interest and care in another. Like money, interest and care for social ills is a well deep enough that we haven’t gotten to the point of saturation yet, meaning that social concern, like money, is not a zero-sum game, as you claim. I think it is shitty of her to try to gin up support for black women by first trying to tear down support for black men, as if it IS a zero sum game.

Single black women have the lowest net wealth of any group, with research showing a median wealth of $100.

If this is true, that’s just… it’s just awful.

Those well to do white ladies with $40 000? That money has been stolen from black women in the form of third world wages paid for domestic labor. White women have no interest in paying fair wages or offering benefits to the mostly black and Hispanic women they hire to raise their children and clean their houses and provide their husbands with sexual services. What would the net worth of those groups look like if white women had to pay a living wage to their nanny or housekeeper?

Oh, don’t start with that “living wage” and “fairness” bullspit, JB. Don’t start with the “paying a low wage is the same as theft” shit, either. You’re smarter than that. If the wage was so damn unfair, the woman accepting it wouldn’t be working for it, would she? At what point in time do we start having a discussion about WHY black people and “brown” people have to accept these, horrible, slave wage low-paying jobs? That in many cases, it isn’t because society failed them, it’s because they failed themselves? If a white man is working a shit job and accepting shit wages for it, it’s because he’s made horrible choices in his life and made himself unmarketable for some reason. It’s because he is bad at creating wealth. But if a minority woman is doing the same, it’s because RACISM?

That’s a cop-out, and you know it.

I’m 100% with you about how shitty it is that many rich white women pay other women to raise their kids for them, but I leave as soon as you start complaining about wage fairness and theft. The market will bear what the market will bear, and to start saying that these women are “slaves” because the pay is very low is stupid. So make it mandatory to give them $15 an hour and health insurance, then. You know what will happen? None (or very few) of them will have a job at all. Good “other option” there. It’s the same thing that we get every time we raise the “minimum wage.” People pat themselves on the back because they “helped” the poor people that make those “slave wages” but the net result is that unemployment at the lowest wage levels goes up. So yeah, those that actually get to keep their job get a bit more on their paycheck, but that’s small solace to those that are now earning nothing.

Why do you think they gerrymander their school districts to keep black children in inferior, underfunded schools while their own children go to state of the art institutions built with the money they have stolen from black women?

I’m ignoring the “stolen from” comment and focusing on the gerrymandering. They do so not because they want to “keep darkie in his place,” but because they don’t want their kids to be around crime and delinquency all the time. You quoted the statistics yourself, and concluded that the fact that black men were many times more likely to be suspended from school, put in prison, and so forth is because “RACISM”, but maybe there is another cause – maybe the cause is because the black family has disintegrated, and a huge portion of black kids are criminal delinquents as a result?

Eric Holder says he wants an honest discussion on race – honest enough for you yet? How about the study I read the other day that shows that when you integrate black students into white schools, it lowers the test scores of the white kids? I’m not saying this because I think black kids are dumb, and that their dumb is infectious (which is stupid and racist, and what I’m sure many people are gladly accusing me of doing as they read this). I’m saying it because I think that the destruction of the black family has resulted in an entire generation of angry, mal-adjusted kids who’s very presence makes it hard for the other non-angry, well-adjusted kids to learn a damn thing. You don’t fix a generation of angry, mal-adjusted kids by fanning that anger and incorrectly blaming “whitey” for their plight. THEIR PARENTS are responsible for their plight, and no one else. PERIOD.

You want to fix it? First things first – stop being afraid to call it like it is. If our legal justice system is, indeed, racist as you and so many others claim, how much of a moron would someone have to be to give them a reason to turn the light of “justice” on you? If you live in a land where you’ve reason to suspect that you’re going to be railroaded at the slightest offence, then for fuck’s sake, DON’T COMMIT OFFENCES! The fact is, black men do represent a disproportionate slice of folks in the criminal justice system, but that’s because they also commit a disproportionate amount of crime. That is not racist. It is true. Until we can have these discussions, this problem will never, ever fix itself.

Again, how much of an idiot does one have to be to see his life was screwed up royally by being fatherless and raised by a single mother, and then turn around and have multiple illegitimate children? How can you live through the misery of being raised insufficiently in poverty by a single mom, and then do the same thing to your kids?

My friend was raised by an alcoholic single mom, and was neglected and abused as a result. He grew up telling himself tht if he ever had kids, he’d never subject them to that. He is the best Dad I know now. He broke the cycle. But in African American culture, the cycle isn’t getting broken, and in fact, in their popular culture and music, is actually being glorified as the best way to live their life.

Whitey didn’t do that to them. They’re doing it to themselves. The vast majority of their pain and suffering in this current day and age is self-inflicted. Let’s have that discussion, shall we?

Alex

it still started with white people, and white people aren’t exactly keen on stopping it from what i’ve seen. the old ” all black people are criminals” stereotype has been internalized if you’re anything to go by, it seems. also, the market can bear a bit more than what it does, it’s just the employers don’t seem to want to give up their pocket lining to do so.

“It all started with white people, and white people aren’t exactly keen on stopping it from what I’ve seen”

Generalization much? You accuse me further down in your post of being a racist because I generalized an entire race of people (which I did NOT do) and then did the exact same thing yourself.

It would do nothing but benefit me for the African American folks in my area to pull themselves out of their rut. Nothing. I’ve no vested interest at all in “keeping blackie down” as you accuse. None.

If, in my lifetime, I see the inequalities between blacks and whites in America eliminated, I will die a happy man. Honestly. But they never will be because people like you won’t allow people like me to speak the truth without branding us racists. And until the truth can be spoken, the problem will always be spun as being the fault of everyone but the people who are actually at fault.

“It seems, also, that the market can bear more than what it does”

Really? Are you an economist, or are you just talking out of your ass? The market will bear exactly what it will bear Period. Externalities like artificially low wages cannot last because the market will adjust to eliminate them automatically. If you artificially raise wages, you will artificially raise unemployment right along with them. I promise. Try it and prove me right, then tell me you’ve done a damn thing to “fix” anything for anybody.

I’d also like for you to point out where I said “all black people are criminals.” I never did. I spoke in established facts, only, and when I spoke about criminal activity, I said that African Americans are much more likely to be criminals than white people. THat is not racist because it is absolute indisputable fact.

It’s race-baiting exactly like that that makes honest discussions about racial issues completely impossible. YOU are the problem, Alex. YOU are the reason that people can’t talk about these issues without worrying that they’ll be fired or punished in some way. YOU. You just called me a racist for stating things that are points of fact. You exaggerated my position to make me look like an ignorant racist rather than listen to what I have to say and decide whether I’m right or wrong based on the merits of my statements. You hyperbolized. Not me. YOU are the problem, Alex. Knock it off, unless you’d like to see another generation of African Americans be miserable because we’re all too afraid to talk about this because of people like YOU.

Alex

when the hell did i call you racist? when i said that the “all black people are criminals” trope had been internalized, i was referring to the time period in which that was the predominant thought and building off your stating that African-American culture as it is today is self-inflicted. i was also referring to such externalizes as artificially low wages when i stated that the market can bear more than what it looks, which is why i included the statement that employers don’t seem to want to thin their pocket lining to do so. and it DID start with white people. white people may not have started slavery, but they kept it going and turned it into an industry. they certainly started the Klan, Jim Crow, and any other forms of segregation and degradation that occurred the past 150 years or so. as for anything i’ve done to try to fix things, there’s not much a 19 year old white kid from Indiana can really do, so make of that what you will. for everything else, try not jumping to conclusions.

“the old ” all black people are criminals” stereotype has been internalized if you’re anything to go by,

Emphasis mine. How,exactly, was I to interpret this statement? You say I interpreted it incorrectly, so enlighten me…

when you said that “if I was anything to go by” that the “stereotype” of “all blacks being criminals” had been “internalized”, if you didn’t mean to make those my words, and by implication accuse me of racism, then I’m curious as to how you intended those words to be interpreted.

As for the externalities and artificially low wages, you’re misunderstanding what I’m saying, and you’re obviously misunderstanding how economics works. You’re saying that the wages are artificially low because white folk are stingy (or whatever, it doesn’t matter why, you’re arguing that wages are being held artificially low for some reason). I’m saying that this is impossible. Markets do not allow for this sort of thing for very long, and the nanny/maid market has been around for WAAAAAYYYY too long for that to be the case still. Everything in a market will seek equilibrium. The wages paid will be equal to the wages that the worker is willing to work for (and equal to the value of the work performed and the uniqueness of skill required), or else the worker will not work for them, and there will be no market. It’s all about supply and demand.

So, to explain further what I mean:

If you want to make something worth more, you either contract supply, or increase demand. If you want to make it worth less, then increase supply and/or contract demand.

if something is inexpensive, that usually means that it is either plentiful, or that there is not much demand for it.

We know that the demand for maids and nannies has been expending, if anything, thanks to feminism. So since wages are staying low, that means that the only option is that supply is expanding.

Which means that the number of minority women who are qualified for nothing more than being a nanny or a maid is growing.

The answer to why that is the case is the answer to the question of why nanny/maid wages are so low. That’s it. That’s the only answer, and it is literally that simple.

if you want the folks to make a better living, you don’t raise their wage, you give them the ability to stop working where the wages are so low, because raising their wage will only get them laid off.

The idea that employers have the ability to CHOOSE to raise wages if only they weren’t so greedy is just fucking retarded. They have to compete. If they raise their costs, they will lower their revenues, because their product will have to become more expensive (meaning people will just buy somewhere else). The same applies to a maid selling her services. The market is bearing the wage that they’re being paid. She can’t ask for more, not because the white woman won’t pay it, but because the OTHER maid down the street will do THE SAME THING for less money, and what idiot would hire the more expensive maid for the exact same work?

The white woman hiring that maid doesn’t owe that maid anything other than a wage, mutually negotiated, for the work she does. Period. Any claim that she has some “social responsibility” to her or some other such nonsense is just that – nonsense. Otherwise, can I determine that you have a social responsibility to me and should cover a $2 an hour wage rate raise for me? If not, why not? Why is that any different than what you’re saying about the maids?

And I don’t hold it against the white woman one bit that she searches until she finds the most cost effective maid service out there. It’s called competition and free market, and you can’t FIX free markets by fucking around with them and tweaking them. The housing bubble is a perfect example of the unintended consequences of doing so. She didn’t gain the average $40,000 net worth that she has by paying more for stuff on purpose. That’s stupid.

Cleaning toilets is not exactly skilled work. There are millions and millions of people out there totally qualified to clean toilets. You can teach a 6 year old to clean a toilet. Therefore, the value of the work is low, and the wage for doing it is low.

The onus is on the maid, not the maid’s employer, to improve her own lot in life if she’s unhappy. To say otherwise is applying ridiculous and arbitrary “social responsibility” requirements on people that simply don’t exist.

Do I have to voluntarily pay the mechanic that works on my car more than he bills me?

No?

Why not?

Because he’s managed to negotiate a fair wage for his work, apparently, while the minority woman is supposedly incapable of doing so?

Isn’t there a smack of paternalism, and even racism, in that assumption?

Alex

for one, someone really needs to work on getting the complexities of language conveyed over the internet. for two, my bit about internalization was an observation supported by your statements, and last i heard, observations don’t really accuse anyone of anything. as well, a maid may not know how to negotiate her wages to a suitable level or be in a position to increase her skill set to inherently demand more. my wage jab was a jab meant more for bigger corporations as they certainly can up the pay levels without affecting the consumer and are certainly being stingy about it, while i acknowledge that someone hiring a maid may not be able to do so. there isn’t a case towards “social responsibility” so much as there’s a case towards people not being dicks to each other. though i will that if you have to get into a fight with a maid over her pay, you probably shouldn’t be employing a maid.

my wage jab was a jab meant more for bigger corporations as they certainly can up the pay levels without affecting the consumer and are certainly being stingy about it,

Not really. Unless there is no competition in the field in which they are supplying, they probably can’t absorb nearly as much increased cost as you’d think.

Most of these companies are selling for 5 to 6 percent profit. The best of them make 9 (and don’t forget, half of that goes to Uncle Sam). We’re not talking about them having the money available to pay their people a whole hell of a lot more than they already do, unless every company in the market agreed to pay their people more simultaneously.

Which they can’t do, because that’s collusion, and that’s illegal.

The idea that companies make massive, windfall profits and could absolutely pay their people more is really one based in a lack of understanding about how markets work. (even the oft-lamented huge bonuses paid to executives wouldn’t amount to more than a few cents an hour raise distributed to every employee for most of the companies that do that)

A company that went full-on altruist and gave everyone a 20% raise would have to raise prices to stay in business, and their market share would fall, necessitating them to take drastic measures to stay in the industry, which means cutting pay or laying people off.

usually it is lay people off. So their altruistic move benefits a few and screws the rest. And even the few that are benefited have to work harder and longer hours now to make up for the people loss.

I, for one, would love to pay my guys more. I really would. But with the margins I make doing what I’m doing, I can’t. I would go out of business.

Alex

corporations and companies must be the same then, because when i think corporation, i think of something like mcdonald’s, which is sure as shit able to raise wages without raising cost. companies are smaller, and more with the market, but aren’t really in the picture as the pay a person can get from there is at least somewhat decent. that’s my view anyways, and don’t underestimate the power of a few cents. on their own, they’re not much, but add them all up and they can do a lot.

i think of something like mcdonald’s, which is sure as shit able to raise wages without raising cost.

How do you know this? Have you seen their balance sheets? Their profit reports?

McDonalds produces a product that is almost infinitely replaceable by any number of competitive products. Even un-like products (a guy going to McDOnalds will probably be just as happy goingh to Taco Bell, the poor bastard) They can not set their own prices for what they charge for these products, unless they choose to set them artificially low (which they do) to actually lose money on a few of them to bring people in. The long and short of it is that McDonalds stores make an acceptable rate of return, and nothing more than that. I can’t remember exactly what it was last time I looked, but it was hovering around 4%, which is low enough that to make less wouldn’t be worth it – you’d just close shop and be done with it for even a half a percent less than that.

If you raise wages in a McDonald’s store, you will have to compensate for that additional cost. They cannot absorb it. You raise prices (which tanks market share, so this really isn’t a good option) or you lay people off and do more with less people..

There is no magical money source. In a competitive market, which a company like McDonald’s lives in, margins and made and lost on a few cents here and a few cents there. They aren’t raking in the cash like folks like you have somehow convinced themselves that they are.

SO no, they CAN’T raise wages without doing something to offset that. I honestly don’t know where you got that idea, but that’s the long, short, and end of it.

And yes, companies and corporations are the same thing – corporations are just a certain, specific type of company.

a maid may not know how to negotiate her wages to a suitable level or be in a position to increase her skill set to inherently demand more.

Bingo. And the issue isn’t that she is unable to negotiate her wages, it is that SHE CAN’T because the market sets the going rate per hour for maid services. She can say “I want more” all she wants, but the fact is, the maid service down the road will do it for X, so she has to do it for X, also.

As for increasing her skill level, the problem is that maid service is not a skilled position, so to increase her pay she’s going to have to switch careers. That is where I would invest my efforts if someone asked me to step in and help the plight of minority women – help them learn a skill so that they can switch careers to something that pays more. That’s the thing that’s holding them back. You’ve hit the nail on the head. The solution is not, nor will it ever be “we should all choose to simultaneously agree to pay them all more” because that’s impossible, and silly, really, when you think about it.

No worries! Sometimes I don’t know what I think. I just muddle through and keep an open mind for better ideas than my own.

Quite frankly, I’m shocked by how often I encounter them!

Assurbanipal

So hey, this happened. A couple of Youtube musicians had sex with their fangirls and it’s a big scandal. Admittedly, some of them might have been under the legal age wherever this happened. (dunno, it’s different here in Europe). But the big picture looks like a classic:

The idol lied about being single, pressured the girls into sex (non-violently) etc. The internet’s response? Of course these girls didn’t have a choice or agency (nope, couldn’t avoid sex not once, but a few times in a row), of course it’s totally fine if the accusations happen anonymously on bloody Tumblr.
Of course, the musicians need to be lynched and their careers have to be crushed. (their record company already dropped them)
And there’s this hilarious outrage and surprise that Youtube performers might do the same things big rockstars do.
Thought you might find it relevant to your blog’s common themes.

“In my sexual experiences with people, nobody ever outright told me “NO, STOP” or pushed me away, or I’d immediately have stopped doing whatever we were doing; everyone I’ve done stuff with has been above the age of consent; and, in all the cases of me having sex with people, everyone says they consented to it.

But there were clearly times where I would try to initiate something, because I thought the other person wanted it, and I trusted my own read of the situation (“they agreed to stay over/they said they wanted it earlier/etc”) rather than paying attention to what the other person was doing and saying in that moment. That’s where I massively fucked up.”

Lean Back

The only way anyone should be having sex is in a relationship. That way a certain level of trust and understanding has already been developed and one is less likely to risk being raped or being falsely accused of rape.

Assurbanipal

Last one, I promise. It’s astonishing to me, how proudly and eagerly these girls admit to being manipulated into all kinds of sex and other stuff. Because they never would’ve done it, if it weren’t for the manipulative nature of these men! Yes, they’re manipulators, with magical powers over women, they can’t be resisted and the brain shuts down in their presence.
Pathetic.

Very thought provoking article. There is one thing you let slide though: where Cooper talks about “black boys being killed by whites with impunity”. Where exactly is this happening? That is a lie on so many levels. Firstly – Trayvon Martin was a man, not a boy. But that is the minor part. The major part is that black boys and men are being killed by other black boys and men with impunity. The reason that the Trayvon Martin incident garnered such national attention is exactly because it was so unusual.

Lean Back

“Trayvon Martin was a man, not a boy. ”

He was a teenage boy, not a legal adult. While the media did try to portray him as a younger boy by posting pics of him from a few years back, still he was not a “man” in the legal, social or physical sense of the term.

The appropriate description would be “teenager”.

Lean Back

“Your role in contemporary, liberal, feminist society is to do all the shit work rich white women think beneath them. Someone still has to raise the children, change dirty diapers, wipe snotty noses, cut up apples so no one chokes. Someone has to clean house and fetch dry-cleaning and pick the kids up from school. Someone has to wash dishes and do laundry and scrub the toilet.”

Black women are not employed as nannies and maids in the home of white women. That would be other white women and latina women. And then only the very wealthy families hire maids and nannies. Like the top 5% of rich people in the country. Nannies and maids are very rare, not even the upper middle class have them.

She writes a lot about how crimes against black girls and women at the hands of black men go unnoticed in the media while Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson hold protests and all manner of media stunts whenever black boys and men suffer crimes at the hands of white men.

She also recommends that black women not wait around for their black prince charming to show up but to swallow their pride and date and marry non-black men instead.

Lean Back

“Isn’t it time white women scrubbed their own fucking toilets?”

They do. Don’t you?

Where are all these white women with black toilet scrubbers? Forgive me but this piece is a highly racialised, dare I say race baiting piece, Ma’aam.

“And so you should. Guess who is the most likely to get married and stay married? College educated, rich white women. Guess who is most likely to enjoy the health and happiness and benefits of marriage? Rich white women.”

But you are saying these women are “slave masters” over black women for, I don’t know, appearantly hiring them to clean their toilets? But if they are married then it is not they alone who are hiring them, but they and their husbands who are hiring them, so really you are saying white men are also slave masters over the black toilet scrubbers they are hiring.

But where is this happening?

ib

if feminists hadn t convinced women that low skilled jobs (receptionist/office assistant/call centre agents) constituted an “empowering career”, these jobs could just as esily be done by low skilled males (black brown any persuasion) allowing them to fulfill a breadwinnder role. women willing to clean others’ would be few and far between and wages at which they d be willing to do such work would sky rocket.

ib

*others’ toilets*

ib

also, here in south africa, black maids are equally exploited by their accomplished black sistaz…

Lean Back

“black maids are equally exploited by their accomplished black sistaz…”

I’m with Goober, I don’t see how working as a maid or nanny constitutes being “exploited”. First, in Canada and the US, very few people even have a maid (or nanny). The vast majority of middle and upper middle class people do their own toilet cleaning. And presumably those that do employ maids and nannies have enough money to pay them fairly. Those that do hire domestic help however are not hiring black people but immigrants (tend to be Mexicans) or white people. In the US you might find wealthy immigrants from India who were used to having domestic help back home hiring Latinos and white people as maids, nannies and gardeners.

I know that in developing countries where domestic help is common to hire people want to hold on to good maids (and drivers) who they can trust and who do a good job. Since these people can easily find jobs elsewhere since it is way more common for the ordinary middle class to hire domestic help, those that do hire them know how valuable it is to get good help and they don’t want to lose them so they have negotiating power.

Also, research “Womanism”. Black women are more influenced by that than they are Feminism.

ib

the US and canada have welfare, south africa doesn’t, hence armies of single black mothers “willing” to work for a MONTHLY salary of $200, for full time cleaning, maybe cooking, and looking after 1,2, 3 kids and perhaps grandpa too…while their children are left unattended in shacks (sa has highest incidence of child rape in the world) . and it s not a high class thing, even a woman who does spreadsheets and answers phones for a living can “afford” a maid, because they are so desperate.

Lean Back

“while their children are left unattended in shacks”

Most of the South Africans I know live in a joint family household and therefore there is always other adult family members there taking care of them when the mother works. Of course, rape can be perpetrated by family members too.

In your area of South Africa are isolated nuclear families the norm?

Richard

Who lied to you that you have a right to exploit black women you delusional cunt? And that you choose not to? What a fucking joke.

Richard, I think it’s important to distinguish between legal right and moral right.

I do indeed have the legal right to exploit black and any other poor woman I wish. They are not protected by labor laws.

I do NOT believe I have the moral right to do so, which is the entire point of the article.

Bea

I am a black woman. I am college educated and I do not have children. It appears that you think black women like myself do not exist.

Most whites think that all blacks are the same. I had one white guy actually tell me: “You grew up in a black household, so you don’t know your father.” I loved his stammering apologies when I told this idiot that my parents have been married for 40 years.

Another white bitch told me that blacks do not emphasize education. This cow worked behind the counter in a DELICATESSEN. I took her to school by talking about my family. My oldest brother is an attorney. The second one is a computer networker and the third is a marketing executive. All of us have post secondary education. I told Miss Dumbass Deli Worker to go slice my ham like a good little slave.

When ignorant whites tell me that I don’t “act black” or “sound black”, they can never answer me when I ask them what I am supposed to sound like. This is likely because my question helped them see how stupid they sound.

You’re right. All black women have several babydaddies, live on welfare and cannot even put together a sentence. I worked as a nanny while I attended college. I quit because I am too intelligent to have rich whites talk down to me. Lazy and entitled white women think that they are too good to raise their own children! That is part of the reason we see more black single moms-white women go running to abortion clinics far more often than we do. Black women are strong enough to take care of their own kids.

I know women like you exist and did not mean to imply you don’t, but you are far from the majority. And I find it interesting that your parents were married for 40 years and raised successful children. Interesting, but not the slightest bit surprising.

All I intended to point out here is that the people who gain the most when black families are broken, women face motherhood alone and men are either in jail or unemployed is white women.

Precisely why they are not the slightest bit interested in addressing any concerns in the black community.

I read Melissa Harris-Perry’s book Sister Citizens and she talks a lot about how the requirement that black women be “strong enough” is one of the key mythologies that hurts black women.

Why should you have to be strong enough to hold up every one else?

Every one else is simply required to hold themselves up, once they are adults.

Thanks for the comment, though.

Bea

I don’t see how strength hurts black women. It is that strength that carried us through slavery and appalling racism. While your female ancestors were swooning and mistreating slaves, my female ancestors were trying to run away for their freedom. We have an innate toughness that white women will never have; many of you are too prissy and LAZY to even raise your own children!

I may not represent the majority of black women, however I will say that there are hundreds of black women just like myself in the bustling metropolis that I live in. Not all of us need to be enslaved by white women my dear.

The reason you find it “interesting” that my married parents have raised successful children is you don’t think that black people can come from good families.

My husband is white. Because of this, I notice that ignorant white people think that they can say racist things right to my face. Being married to a white man doesn’t change the color of my skin. I have been mistreated by black men. I also notice that it is so hard to meet a good man no matter what color he is. When I was single, if a white man was interested in me, I had to make sure that he wasn’t just fetishizing my race.

I don’t see how strength hurts black women. It is that strength that carried us through slavery and appalling racism. While your female ancestors were swooning and mistreating slaves, my female ancestors were trying to run away for their freedom. We have an innate toughness that white women will never have; many of you are too prissy and LAZY to even raise your own children!

You’ll have to read Harris-Perry, then, because that is HER argument, not mine. And I am raising my own children thank you very much.

I may not represent the majority of black women, however I will say that there are hundreds of black women just like myself in the bustling metropolis that I live in. Not all of us need to be enslaved by white women my dear.

Nor did I make that argument at any point.

The reason you find it “interesting” that my married parents have raised successful children is you don’t think that black people can come from good families.

No, the reason I find it interesting that the married, nuclear family tends to be the most successful family organization no matter what class or face you happen to be from.

Bea

The title of this blog post was very specific about black women still being the slaves of white women.

Bea

I also said “many” white women are too lazy to raise their own children. I did not say “all” white women do not raise their own progeny.

Bea

Richard, JudgyBitch is a racist. That should tell you how smart she is.

And you are skating close to a kind of disrespect I simply don’t allow on my blog. You’ve made a number of assumptions that are untrue, and that’s fine, but if this conversation turns into simple insults, then there is the door, sweetheart.

Don’t let it hit you in the ass on your way out.

Bea

You can dish it but you can’t take it. This blog post was beyond disrespectful, bigoted and insulting.

Next time, don’t sling ridiculous racist bullshit about black women and you won’t have one of us take you to task.

Bea, you can “take me to task” all you like as long as you are not doing so abusively. My argument boils down to this: black women are still facing incredible disadvantages and white women are the ones who primarily benefit from that. It makes much more sense to align your interests with the men in your community rather than with white women who really have no interest is seeing any of the black community’s concerns addressed.

Your argument that you aren’t one of the disadvantaged women is not particularly compelling. I’m glad you are not. That’s terrific.

Now what about all the women who are?

Lyn

What’s the point ? This article, like so many others about blacks being exploited, only gives reasons why but never any real solutions. Well I have a theory. Black women should stop having babies that they can’t afford to feed. Black men usually won’t be around to help raise a child right? So why has it become a generational evil that blacks continue to perpetuate? It’s almost as if blacks don’t have any control over their reproductive organs. Black people continue to make children with no intentions of marriage. Then black women are left single, no man in sight and waiting to do it all over again with the next dude. That’s why it’s so many 30-35 year old black grandmothers. It’s a cultural norm for black women and black men to baby mamas and baby daddies instead of mothers and fathers